At Smithfield we are used to this challenge, working with brands and charities to improve local search visibility, improve click-through rate and ultimately drive highly qualified traffic to their website or store location which is more likely to convert. Further, having SEO integrated into the wider media enables a full media planning and optimisation approach when delivering location based marketing. This gives a more joined up and effective campaign which isn’t delivered in silos.

What Does Local SEO Bring?

You may wonder why a focused approach to Local SEO is any different to a general approach to SEO. It’s a great question to be asking.

The answer isn’t black and white, Local SEO should really be part of a package of holistic on-going SEO and isn’t a one-off campaign. Part of the optimisations you may be recommended (such as code changes) may be one-off but other works should be on going. Local SEO is separated out as more of a theme, a little like Link Building and Content Creation often are.

Local SEO, as with all SEO, is something that brings long-term gains. It is something that gives exponentially compared to the amount of effort you put in, whether that’s research or implementation.

From the view of what users see in search, Local SEO allows your business to take advantage of search features such as the Local Pack (the map and 3 local listings), the knowledge graph, people asking (questions) and other features too. Additionally, the better your local SEO the more likely your website will intergrate well with Voice Search (Comscore believe we will see 50% of consumers using Voice Search every day by the end of 2020). Based on a study by Chitika, mobile voice-related searches are 3X more likely to be local-based than text.

Overall, localised SEO is about delivering high quality traffic to your website or store which is more likely to convert.

Local SEO Tips to Rank #1

1. Exploit Google My Business

GMB is completely free to sign up too (https://www.google.com/business/) and yet is surprisingly under used. List your one location or your 1000 locations, if you’ve got multiple locations make sure you individualise them if you can – especially use unique photos, around 50% of GMB locations have no photos! Stand out from the crowd!

2. NAP Consistency is Key

Name, Address & Phone Number. Ensure every location and everywhere you list (and have citations) the NAP is the same format, and its in the format Google wants! (https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en)

3. One Location, One Page

Don’t stuff all your locations on to a single page, its just really annoying for users (imagine scrolling for an opening time or phone number!) and why on earth would google rank that page for an individual location out of your 50? It wouldn’t.

Local SEO is key to delivering quality traffic to both your website and your stores. It works well at keeping traffic ticking over, when no campaigns are running, but comes into its element when integrated into a wider location based marketing campaign. It keeps consumers in the customer journey building a greater propensity to purchase.